Go, his Phillies-loving wife insisted.
"I said, 'I'm not going,' but she was all for it," McCollum said. "She came with us to Game 5."
Spiro Malaspina decided before Game 5 that if the Phillies won, he had to take his 12-year-old son, Alex, to the Bronx. He found tickets for $668 apiece online.
Steep, but worth it, he said.
"I'm going to be working a few extra weekends to make up for this," said Malaspina, 54, who lives in Nesco, N.J. "We're big fans."
Chris Fried, a lawyer from Northeast Philadelphia, bought his ticket to Game 6 before he even knew there would be a Game 6.
"I don't want to look back in 20 years and say, 'I wish I had been there,' " said Fried, 31.
Judi Dunn of Haddon Heights planned her trip to New York for months. Her friend Dawn Kozlawski of Chatham, N.J., roots for the Yankees, and the two decided midseason that if their teams made the World Series they would go in person to see them square off.
Dunn, in a Phillies coat and scarf, looked around her at a sea of navy-clad fans. There were fewer Phillies enthusiasts in the Yankee Stadium stands than there had been for Games 1 and 2; she felt more than a little outnumbered.
"There's 10 of us and 49,000 of them," Dunn joked. "But all of the others are cheering for the wrong team."
The Toutkoushian family of Doylestown came because they're huge Phillies fans and it was cheaper to buy tickets for Yankee Stadium than it was for Citizens Bank Park.
"Can you believe it?" said John Toutkoushian Jr., 51, who found five tickets on eBay. "It was still expensive, but this is the Phillies. It might be another 30 years before we get here again."
In front of him, his son, John III, 27, traded good-natured barbs with a Yankees supporter.
"We'll be nice to you," the Yankees fan said. "We treated the last 26 teams we beat pretty well, too."
